A few useful things for making sculpted prims!

OK, I know the building forum AND the wiki have lists, but here are what I use and find easy to use:

Sculptypaint (For rocks, some tree parts, use randomization and smooth to make a natural look)
Wings3d(Really user friendly in my opinion, extremely powerful for a freebie)
Rokuro Pro(Good for any symetrical round objects, as well as some other shapes.. generally best for symmetrical in my opinion)
HM2Sculpt (Height Map to Sculpt, I made my first sculpties with this little program. Made black and white height maps in Photoshop and made them into sculpted mountains ^^)
MoI(Moment of Inspiration, powerful but limited at present in my opinion for sculpties. NURBs only)


So there's that... here's a few tips ^^

For a natural look for any sculpty, if you have the bmp image, import into sculptypain and randomize a bit, then smooth once. It can make it look a lot more natural without much change to the object. Also great because it won't save over the old file!

For texturing, get used to whatever you use to edit images, then use something like Chosen Few's test pattern to figure out where to do what (Check the forums, its there)

For ANY program, make sure you know the limits when it comes to sculpties. Such as in Wings, you can only use a certain number of faces, vertexes, slices, etc. So get used to your program and how to prepare for sculpties. Some don't need any preparation, such as MoI, as it is NURBs.

For anything you want to walk on... it's going to take more than the sculpty. Make the sculpty phantom and add a plane/incline in that is invisible, as sculpted prims dont have the correct physical shape (Make one and try to walk on it, you'll see)

Wings3d has one of the oddest, yet user friendly interfaces I've found. On the bottom left it tells you what each mouse button does at a given time, and most things can be done with just the mouse. Also tells you what other things do, such as keyboard shortcuts. Super easy to figure out if you remember that ^^

Have fun ^^
-Oki

A few tips and tricks when building - In world

Heyas. Well.. I'm a builder (I say amateur, though I've been called a Master by a few), and felt I might be able to help some people by posting some of the tips and tricks I've learned while building various things.

Firstly, use the edit window for most things! Click that little 'more' tab and get used to how things in it work. When trying for perfection, the 'position' and 'size' boxes are invaluable. There is no other way to get perfect alignment.

Talking about alignment, if you have four square prims, and need them centered (Centered as if one) above something, create another square, same size as the other four, and set it's position to the center. For example:
4 10x10 prims to make a 20x20. Create another 10x10 prim. Let's say the 4 prims are at <0,0,0>,<10,10,0>,<0,10,0>, and <10,0,0>. Settheh new one at <5,5,0.5>, and it should be perfect. Essentially, set the 5th prim halfway between the X of the two 'sets' and halfway between the Y of the two 'sets'. (By set I mean the two prims on the same X or Y location.) This will make it centered, then you can link the 5 together with the centered one as the root, and center it, then delete the 5th one.

The two-wall prim. If you're doing architectural builds and want to save as many prims as possible, one of the most overlooked methods is to make a corner (two walls) out of one prim. To do this, hollow a cube and cut it to B=.5 E=1. This will create a simple corner, though it's edges are slanted. for a 10m long walls, this method will always have slanted edges, however, if you cut it more, the cube will end up with 5m long walls, and a flat end for each.

Don't use more prims than you have to if there is no increase in quality. If there is a change in texture, and you can use photoshop, combine them into one, and make it one prim. # of prims can govern whether your build is practical or just pretty. All builds should be practical when possible, unless it is just for looks.

For a more natural look for water, use a cut and thinned out torus for falling water. More than one can make it look even better, but just one is pretty useful too. Alos, torii and spheres are the most useful shapes for making natural looking objects. Trees, rocks, water, hills... if not made of sculpties they are made up mostly of these (Some rocks are cut and twisted cubes though.)

Play around with changing a shape at different points. Such as the old favorite: Make a sphere, dimple it, then change it to a cube. The dimple will remain, though you can't change it as a cube. See what shape-specific changes do when you change the shape!

Thats about it for now, I'll be adding to it later, and making some more posts now on various topics!

Have fun ^^
-Oki

Welcome to the Blog of Second Lifer Okiphia Rayna!

So... I got bored and decided to start a blog. Within this blog, I will post FAQs, helpful tips on various things (Probably mostly building) and news that I find interesting. All information will be pertaining to Second Life, and you can reach me in Second Life as Okiphia Rayna. IM's are fine for now, I've never had more than 100 while offline.

Keep checking back for useful SL info!

-Oki